The Unfortunate Story of Roddy Mayhem, Julie Steimle [i can read book club TXT] 📗

as she said that if I worked hard I would be able to catch up. I hoped so. Her imps were thin, so I knew she was nice at least.

In between classes I noticed a tall guy talking to Spastic backwards. He was tugging on Spastic’s bow tie as if leading a dog collar. I was about to interfere when Spastic jumped back while tugging on the jerk’s nose—mocking him with backward speak—“Dude, alone tie my leave! You on imps the sick I’ll, don’t you if!”

But the guy grinned at Spastic as if he had made a new friend. So I left it alone. His imps weren’t malicious or anything.

When I got to English class, however, that’s when the teasing started.

Someone raised a hand. “Why does that guy always sit in the back of the room in every class?”

The pencil thin teacher who reminded me of one of those Femanazis in pantsuits famous for going into politics, Ms. Amherst, gazed at me sharply and said matter-of-factly, “He is not yet on level with the class. This is the first time he has been in school.”

Several people in the room began to snicker.

My face felt hot, especially at how cold that teacher had said it. Dr. Chaz Pierce, that weird science teacher with the nervous imps and twitchy reactions to anything ghoulie hadn’t been that cold. But this woman with the presumptuous and snobby imps, gazed at me as if she also thought I was trash not worth the time.

“You will try to keep up,” she said as her eyes rested on me. “If you can.”

Her imps encouraged her to mock me. And they were chubby. I had no idea that teachers did that kind of thing, but I knew she might.

“Moron Mayhem,” someone hissed at me from a more forward row.

I bristled. The imps were giving me all sorts of ideas for ways to get back at them. If I hadn’t promised to not go all Tom Brown on people, I would have done it then.

It put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day.

I trudged to PE, following my classmates, wishing I did not have to stay with that group of people the entire time. Their imps were shouting all sorts of nasty things for them to say and do to me. And honestly, I think the only reason they did none of them was that they knew I could overhear it all. No surprise attack as it were. They probably also heard about what had happened in my room between Morgan and myself.

I noticed Wispy coming out of PE looking a little more chipper. Her frothy blonde hair was in a long French braid and this brown-haired version of that genetically-engineered movie chick—Hannah—walking alongside her—smiling. The Hannah lookalike had crazy imps—they seemed to be stimming from being sensory overloaded. They shouted all sorts of disjointed things that did not quite make sense to me. I then realized it was because Miss Hannah was in fact getting sensory overload and she was dealing severely with impulse control over what she was sensing. And yet she was smiling.

Wispy waved at me and said, pointing to Hannah-lady—“This is Lorelei. She hears stuff too.”

I nodded. What do you know? Wispy had found a kindred spirit who understood her. Honestly, I was immediately jealous.

And they walked on, going back into their conversation. “So, how do you shut them out?”

Lorelei answered with a smooth, almost seductively calm sound of voice as she said, “It takes a lot of work. I am not always good at it. The emotions that come to me are strong. But the first thing I have to do is recognize that they are not mine….”

They walked out of earshot.

I would have stood there all day and watched them go had not a classmate whopped me on the side of the head and said, “You’re gonna be late dumb-dumb. The sergeant hates that.”

Sergeant?

I stared after him, wondering what that meant. But I followed, going into the gym.

The boys walked across the open basketball courts to the other side of the room to a set of doors. There was one set for girls and one for boys. I kept looking for the one that was non-gender specific, but they had given no option to that effect. I went into the boys’ side to ask about it, but never got to the question when I arrived.

Ok, just like any gym or YMCA changing room, there were smelly sweaty lockers. I maneuvered my way through them to the office where a beefy sort of man was sitting, making sure the boys didn’t horse around in that room or in the showers. His eyes rested on me and he sighed. However, he gestured for me to come forward.

“Did you get your gym clothes yesterday?”

I nodded, realizing I had left them in my dorm room.

He sighed again. He ignored his imps’ shouts to call me a number of names—including maggot—as he said, “Look, kid, if you want to survive this class you have to be on your toes. Can you get your PE clothes without those imps shredding them?”

I stared, amazed. He knew about imps and what they would actually do. I shook my head.

Sighing once more, the sergeant said, “Alright. For today you can sit it out. But tomorrow you have to suit up. I don’t care if you cut holes in the shirt for your wings or in your pants for a tail, but suit up.”

I nodded, a smile escaping me as I realized he really didn’t care as long as I was doing PE.

And even though his imps still shouted verbally abusive things with harsh military language, to make me do two hundred push-ups, or to scrub the toilets with my toothbrush, he said in a calm voice, “You’re handling this pretty well for a half-imp. Tom Brown would have been saluting me and making snarky remarks while whistling the national anthem.”

I broke into a laugh. That he would.

“You’ve got more self-control than he does,” the sergeant said. He stuck out his hand for a meaty shake. “I’m Sergeant Steven Kreiner. Call me Sergeant Kreiner or Coach Kreiner. And if you have any trouble, you come to me. Don’t go full Tom Brown on everyone. Ok?”

I saluted him. “Got it.”

And he smiled.

But then he shouted in a loud military voice. “Everyone suit up and be in your spot in five minutes! Go! Go! Go!”

Ok, can I just say, this dude just about made me want to join the military. I later found out that he was an ex-navy seal—though some kids claimed he had been part of a mind control project from the government—project Manchurian something or other—and had been broken from it with the help of some dude called Carlton Jones—an ex-Holy Seven dude. It was the locker room gossip about him. When they found out that I had met two members of the current Holy Seven, some of them grumbled jealously that I was lying. But others reassured them that the Holy Seven had caught me—which to be honest wasn’t exactly inaccurate. Just mostly. They hadn’t caught me. Just the other three. Eve had caught me.

Anyway, PE was ok. Not that people didn’t start to call me dumb-dumb in that class, but that when they did, Sgt. Kreiner corrected them—saying, “That’s Mayhem punk! Twenty pushups!” and they soon stopped… within his earshot. They called me Dumb-dumb the devil boy once we left the gym and were on our way to lunch.

I rejoined my friends from LA in the cafeteria.

Piranha was peevishly eating her sandwich while Wispy was talking with Lorelei—clearly having hit it off with her. The imps around them were just as noisy, but both of them were a lot less agitated by it. That is until that Moyra froo-froo sauntered by with her posse. Moyra cast one disdainful eye on Lorelei and said, “If you lie with the dogs, you come up with fleas.”

A shock of terror shot through Lorelei and she hopped out of her seat as if Wispy were infested with fleas. Wispy’s face went ashen, watching it. She whipped her angry eyes on Moyra who was already gliding her way across the room as if nothing had been said at all. And worse, Lorelei followed her.

“Good riddance,” muttered Piranha. “She was one of them, you know.”

But Wispy broke into tears. “No, she wasn’t! She’s just super sensitive!”

“A flake,” Piranha insisted dryly.

Upending Piranha’s foot tray, Wispy ran out of the room. I don’t even think she took any food with her. Did she ever eat?

“Did you have to say that?” I asked, setting my tray down at the table next to—well, Spastic wasn’t there—so Piranha. I wondered where Spastic was. I was sure I had seen him when I had first come into the room.

Piranha shrugged, picking up her fallen food and tray. “No. But that girl was getting on my nerves. Her imps were crazy.”

“I saw,” I said.

Then I started into my ham. I think I was half way though it when Spastic stumbled back to our table, did a backflip and landed on it. Someone had pushed him—but that was no excuse for his shoe to tromp into my serenely thick mashed potatoes. I whopped his shoe with my spoon and shouted, “What gives?”

Looking down, Spastic stepped out of it. “Sorry.”

But he did not get off the table. In fact he rose to his full five feet—tall for a thirteen-year-old, believe me—and glared back at those who had shoved him. “I have as much right to walk through this cafeteria as anybody!”

“No, you don’t,” the boys who had been harassing shouted back. Their ringleader, some black kid from grade nine, said, “That is an imp free zone.”

Both Piranha and I peered over in that direction. It was packed full of imps.

“No, it isn’t,” Spastic replied matter-of-factly—because of course he was right.

“Yes it is! We say so!” they shouted back. I think that ringleader was a little elvish, because his chocolate eyes were swirling darker and lighter, and he seemed to smell of water. I wondered about that.

Spastic laughed. “Just because you say it is, doesn’t make it imp free. It is full of imps.”

“Is not!” They looked back to check.

“Is too,” Spastic cackled in retort. “Imps are everywhere. Your wimpy eyes just can’t see them.”

That guy screamed—and the water in the nearest containers flew up at Spastic, hitting him in the face. “I don’t have wimpy eyes!”

Spastic shook off the water. Tromping down the lunch table he, grabbed my spoiled lunch tray and raised it to chuck at the kid.

“Mr. Jones?” a teacher’s voice piped up over the crowd, almost like a megaphone.

Every guy with the last name of ‘Jones’ froze. I realized then that Jones was mostly an alias—including for Spastic whose real last name was something embarrassing like Hufflehoffer. So the teacher then called, “Spastic Jones.”

Several people busted up laughing. I suppose his imp name was kind of funny, but I didn’t think Spastic deserved a crowd of hecklers.

“To the principal’s office.”

Spastic huffed, then launched up from the table with a jump and went straight through the ceiling.

“Walk to the office for Pete’s sake! Of all the—” But the teacher chased after to make sure Spastic arrived there.

Piranha and I shared a look. This was turning out to be a phenomenally eventful first day at school.

And, of course, that was when Morgan Buttman walked up, along with two others. He faced me with a steely expression and said, “I’ve decided we started off on the wrong foot yesterday.”

I raised my eyebrows as that was what I had said yesterday.

He stuck out his hand. “Truce?”

His imps were saying nothing—which bothered me. They were not suggesting anything naughty, but their eyes were glistening.

“I won’t bug you, and you don’t bug me,” he said.

I had to give the creep the very thin benefit of the doubt. I had to. It was the only way I could survive this school. So, I gripped his